Wednesday was a spontaneous trip to London to help Hannah pick up and mail some stuff for her fiance's brother who had served a mission there. I went because I really wanted to see the London temple. We got up at 2 am to catch an early bus and then make a 8:10 train into a little town called Lingfield where the temple is. We hadn't thought to write down the directions from the station to the temple which we had looked up the previous day so we had to call them. We ended up walking about two and a half miles. It wasn't that hard but it was a bit of a hike in.
The temple was very beautiful. It was built with very straight lines, and little additional adornment. I liked how simple it was. The London temple also has beautiful grounds – they were so large! Winding paths circled around flower beds, towering trees, and pretty duck ponds. We both sat and drank in the peace and quiet. Temples are very special places!
The mission home was situated on the temple grounds so that is where we went next. Calvin had told Hannah that it was probably just one small box but it turned out to be a medium sized box and a large bag full of heavy books, photo albums, and binders of the letters he had been sent. We were cursing his name a bit and laughing as well as we moved everything into our bags. I couldn't shut my backpack and Hannah had to wear a recyclable grocery bag as a backpack. Then we bent over and hauled it back two and a half miles to Lingfield. Can you say homeless? Unfortunately, Hannah has all the pictures of us packed up.
Mailing the stuff turned out to be a small bit of a nightmare for Hannah because it got very expensive but luckily she was going to be reimbursed. By the time we got all of that sorted out it was the afternoon and we were exhausted already but we were stuck in London until the 11:30 coach for Cardiff left. It was the cheapest one.
We tried to fill the time. We went to Oxford Circus to see the high end shops, Portabello road to an antique store for Hannah and then we went to the Victoria and Albert museum for me. The V&A is massive and such a beautiful place. The building alone is a museum regardless of what they put inside of it. I was particularly impressed by a tiled staircase that was so ornate you felt bad using it. I saw a very cool exhibit of jewelry through the ages, pottery, sculpture, drawings, paintings, glass work, metal work, and practically everything else you can think of. We took some time there to just relax and rest our tired bodies.
We ate dinner at a delicious Indian restaurant called Khan's. The food was soooooooo good. I had delicious Tandoori chicken with rice and nan bread. The hot food helped us perk up our spirits and energy quite a bit. It was embarrassing when their card reader had trouble with my debit card (not an unusual thing in the UK) but we managed and in the end had a great meal.
Then, to pass the last hours of the day, we went to see the new Studio Ghibli film “Arriety”. It's a spin off the borrowers and as always with a Miyasaki film, a gorgeous movie. I love the way they animate and especially their scenery in the background. The music wasn't as well done as some of his others (like Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away) but it was still really good. I would like to see it again except with English dubbed over instead of subtitled. There was something really fun about listening to the original Japanese though.
We thought the movie ended with lots of time for us to get back to the coach station but we were wrong. We had to run through the tube system and all the way back to Victoria Coach station. Imagine two girls with blood shot and swollen eyes, red faces, hair flying, and back packs banging all over the place. That was us. We made it to the bus as it was loading. Phew. I would not have loved sleeping in Victoria Station.
About 15 minutes into the bus ride we fell asleep and I didn't wake up until we were 15 minutes from our stop. It was 2 am. 2 am Wednesday morning to 2 am Thursday morning is 24 hours. Sure we had a two hour nap at the end but does that really count? We looked at each other with crazed eyes and realized we had to walk a mile back to our flat. We laughed a lot but I think that was to keep from crying a little bit. Now I just think it was funny.
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